When you think of car disasters , you probably suppose of horrible crash or even model that were duds . ( Sometimes a tragedy meansboth . ) But on this sequence of CarStuff , Ben Bowlin and Scott Benjamin bring us the story of an automobile disaster that ’s a petty outside the box — or the load ship , as the causa may be .
The Cougar Ace may voice like a " Top Gun"-worthy nickname , but it ’s actually the name of a car common carrier ship build in Japan in 1993 . And it ’s deserving pointing out that it was n’t a middling participant . The Cougar Ace set a Canadian recordfor delivering 5,214 cars to a port in 2005 on a individual trip . So in July 2006 , when the ship was lumbering toward the West Coast of North America to present more than 4,800 vehicles — 4,703of which were brand name - newfangled Mazdas — no one was especially worried that the55,328 - metrical ton ( 60,989 - long ton ) ship was n’t up to the task .
But just as the ship was extend to North American waters near the Aleutian Islands , a routine practice went very much awry . ship entering U.S. waters have to purge brine from the barretter tanks that keep ship level ; they do this in orderliness to assure that no strange or invasive maritime species enter the ecosystem . But forreasons not entirely clear , when the tanks were purged , the crew did n’t let in fresh brine to counterbalance the weightiness turn a loss . And so the behemoth readily keeled to the porthole side , where it bobsled sideways in the weewee .
The crew was lucky ; of the 23 workers , only one suffered a broken ramification . Within 24 hours , the crew was evacuated . But that still left a655 - foot ship , contain thousands of cars now hang from taut straps , floating on its side in the sea . A salvage bunch was called in , and Marty Johnson , a naval designer , created a elaborate design and calculation to right the ship . Unfortunately , on July 31 , 2005 , Johnson was killed while surveying the ship and abide a fall .
By August , however , the gang had put Johnson ’s programme into natural action and pump urine in to easy right the ship . Through September , the ship was towed to Portland and the auto — only 68 of which had digest any legal injury — were offloaded onto 50 acres ( 20 hectare ) of empty lots . Where they sat … and sat .
Because Mazda had no idea what to do with the cars . Nobody wanted a " wreck " railway car , and Mazda was n’t about to put the auto on the route : The company had done some testing and determined that , well , it ’s difficult to determine damage on cars hang from nylon straps at odd Angle for long period .
So for months , worker painstakingly take apart the railway car to guarantee that every single part was destroyed , never to see a roadway . That meant deploying every airbag , draining every fluid , collecting every nut and bolt of lightning , and then feeding each flattened car intothe Texas Shredder , a behemoth designed to pound off cars into pieces of alloy no great than a fistful .
To learn more about the Cougar Ace and other stories of the car - eating ocean , listen tothis episodeof CarStuff with Ben and Scott .
